"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

What Are Your Real Political Values?

I've been doing the politics thing in a mostly mainstream way since 2003, following the action, participating heavily at times, trying to steer the Big Spaceship a little more to my liking. Following the horserace (or sometimes bloodsport, or sometimes commedia) in DC can leave one detached from the original motivation. One of my cousins asked me recently what my "real political values" are, I'm guessing because I tweet about class war and sound generally agitated. It actually made me stop and think, and that was nice. Here's what I came up with...

Read More

Tags: 

Do Unto / "Cognitive Surplus", "The New Capitalist Manifesto" and "Cloud Atlas"

I took a bunch of books with me on vacation — facilitated while traveling light thanks to the Kindle (that's my one and only plug; I'm aware opinions are mixed) — and over the past three weeks I managed to get through five volumes. Today I'm going to write a little about the two non-fiction works, Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus), Umair Haque's New Capitalist Manifesto and David Mitchell's novelly-structured novel, Cloud Atlas.

Read More